Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand welcome back Minutefans. We are around 3 hours from puck drop of the first home game of the 2011-2012 UMass hockey season and god damn it feels good. If you haven’t already, Walsh’s game preview is a must read for specifics on this matchup, and while you are devouring good information you might as well read Triangle’s pregame as well.

This is a big weekend for UMass. Last weekend showed up that this team does have the talent to take games, but clearly there is going to be a struggle closing them out all year. The next two days will be important in setting the tone for the rest of the year. Northeastern was both a surprise and a disappointment, but winning out both games this weekend, vehemently winnable games might I add, will let our beloved minutemen head out to a string of tough games with some degree of confidence, hopefully enough to perhaps steal a game or two.

Boyle is getting the start, as far as I know. “O’BOYLE RULES!” seems to be the frontrunner of things yelled after big saves, but lets see where this goes.

It all starts tonight. Bentley is a cupcake. They will fight but if this team plays their game a win should be a gimme. But if watching this team for a few years has taught is anything, gimmes are the hardest games. We can’t see a repeat of the early home game against Army, where a young Minuteman team was absolutely manhandled in a way i neither want to ask nor tell about. Tonight is where a matured team needs to set the tone. Lets hope our outlook on the season isn’t radically changed by tomorrow

To all the Mullins Virgins out there, Scoops Bitter’s into to UMass fandom is a must read so you don’t look like an ignorant drunk asshole, instead of the preferred drunk asshole.

Also, we have just received word that Matty G will be saying de nada after the 1 minute thank you tonight, per my suggestion. It is imperative  that you and your friends yell “Gracias” instead of Thank you. I am of the opinion that this is awesome, but even if you think it sucks do it anyways so I can be happy, okay?

See you all at the Bill, lets rally around the flag kids

-Matt

Hey guys, hey. I hate to over-post but I feel as though this merits its own post. Per Matty V at the Gazette, UMass basketball super freshman and potential DK saver Jordan Laguerre is done for this year because of academics. Frankly, folks, this may be the final omen of the crumbling Kellog era. Already hampered with losses and a continually underperforming team, I could see DK gone by the end of this year.

We, as a blog (ok, the 2/3rds of us who give a shit on this blog) has high optimistic expectations for this team, especially given their A10 preseason ranking of 12. (!!!!!) Yes, in a conference in the number “ten” in its title, we were slotted to be 12th. Golly gee we didn’t see that coming 2 years ago. Laguerre was supposed to come in and provide a spark that this team has lacked for a while now. A pure scorer with surprisingly good passing skills and an all-around game, Laguerre was the supposed savior of this sinking ship but with him now done-zo for the year, it will be hard to replace the scoring left my Big City Anthony Gurley.

All is not bleak however. While I certainly don’t see this team shocking the conference, I could see them contending for home court in the A10 playoffs. Raphiael “Big D(ara)” Putney is going to be one of the best players in the conference someday (and that someday might be later this year for all we know, but mark my words he is the truth). I still have glimmers of hope that Sampson Carter will fulfill him promise along with TV, who could absolutely get over his Sophomore slump  and be a dominant player. Maybe the inclusion of a real point guard will be a much bigger deal than originally thought. Maybe Jesse Morgan will be only the good parts of Freddie “Freddie’s mannequin” Riley and only good things will come from their collective Twitter accounts.

Or maybe not. And it would be year 4 of the ‘hair gel and nice suit by no wins’ era. Either way, thank god we have hockey.

-Matt

Not to get political, but there seems to be alot of protesting going on lately. And while this protesting did lead to the glorious rise of the term “brotestor”, the chief complaint from confused white people everything has been “what do these kooky kids want? what are their demands, besides more weed waka waka”. Well, in a preemptive move, Fight Mass would like to make a list of demands that should be accommodated if you ever want to…..something? Nevertheless, here is a sample ransom form that should be used if we decide to occupy the bill (aka passing out drunk after forgetting to eat all day before a pregame something that has obviously never happened right guys?)

______________________________________

Fight Mass has come into possession of the super duper secret notebook of Don “Toot” Cahoon, and if you ever want to see it again, the following demands must be met. Though we are willing to negotiate, because we really don’t know what to do with a notebook full of sonnets about Mark Dennehy and the phrase “All work and no (power)play makes Toot a dull boy” written over and over.

Fight Mass demands the following

Where is my pixies durring games huh? I mean, there is a song about UMass for fuck’s sake! You are just going to ignore the biggest cultural contribution UMass has made in the last 30 years because it isn’t a pop song? Oh, its becasue there is a dirty word in there? Well so does half of the rap you play, you just don’t play the part with the cursing and YOU CAN DO THAT FOR THIS SONG TOO YOU IDIOTS! And while we’re on the subject, why no dinosaur jr? I want “Almost ready” played before the puck drop. I want Freak Scene played in any context always ever. The late 80′s early 90′s Amherst music scene is legendary and to never play these artists is a slap in the fact too Happy Valley culture! FIX IT NERDS!

We want a hockey band. As a certain geometry blog pointed out far more eloquently, the hockey team needs a band. The women’s basketball team has a band for fuck sake, and all we get as hockey fans is a top 40 station over the speakers, with a notoriously out-of-tune recording of Fight Mass? Nah son, its time to join the rest of hockey east and get a band. Merrimack has a band, and they are barely a school. FIX IT.

I want a dunkins at the Mullins center. And booze, but I would rather have the dunks first ($3 coffee > $8 bud light). Although we would take Dunkins as an advertiser at the Bill as a start. Did you know that UMass is the only school in HE not sponsored by dunkins? how dare they. FIX IT

Enough with the noise meeter. It sucks. If you are going to have a noise meeter, at least have a legitimate noise meeter, like the one the Bruins have. The noise meeter at the Mullins center is a video of a noise meeter that has ABSOLUTELY NO CORELATION TO WHAT TYPE OF NOISE IS EMANATING FROM THE CROWD! Thats almost like having a recording of a fight song at a sporting event. Oh wait…..F-F-F-F-F-FFFFFFFIIIIIIIIIIIIIX IT!!!!!1

We demand 3 more years of eligibility for Doug Kublin. Although it will be hard to lure him back after he has had german girls. Amherst pucksluts, stup ya game up.

If we are killed durring this hostage crisis, we demand that Chip Ainsworth and Scoops Marurek write our truth fearing obituary.

Please leave more demands in the comment section, as I’m sure I missed many injustices.

This post was much funnier in my head,

-Matt

As you may have realized by now, Fight Mass is not a breaking news organization. Nor, it seems, are we very interested in writing outside of hockey season. However, in the interest of providing you, our reader(s(?)) with the hot-sports-takes you demand, we humbly present to you Broken News, a summary of things that happened, at some point, somewhere in the UMass universe. 

So, I’m not sure if you realized it or not, but UMass sports is back. With last Thursday’s “Wait, this is all we are doing against a school with no athletic scholarships?” narrow defeat of The College of the Pretty Rad Cross, it was the same old story for Minutemen football: Bend but do not break defense, solid running, and Mark from Fear the Triangle straining his neck shaking his head at the Kevin Morris era. I’ll keep it short because, frankly, it was a snoozer of a game (outside of the fried Oreos Holy Cross served). But, as constituted, this team can barely compete in the FCS, let alone move up. Maybe it’s first game jitters, and it very well could be the “playing down to your competition” syndrome that plagues this team, but it will be interesting to see how this team looks against the URI Fighting Andy Greshes (who I thought lost their FB team but apparently not). Hopefully one of the QBs can take the reigns in the next two weeks. I liked Kellen Pagel a bit more on Thursday, but I found out his sister goes to Ohio State so now I don’t even know what to think. [Editor's note: Uhh, this happened, lol articles written over an extended period of time. I'll reflect on it later. -MB]

UMASS IS PLAYING HOCKEY AT MOTHER FUCKING FENWAY, This has been rumored for a while, but it feels really good to have it official instead of worrying about Hockey East pulling the plug and saying “lol no jk” and getting BU or BC to play again. No doubt we will be there in full force. Tickets go on sale soon kids, so get ready but do if after us because we need better seats. [Editors note: LOLOLOLOL WHY DID I THINK IT WAS OK TO NOT REREAD THE FIRST PART OF THIS STORY -MC]

Mr Paul Dainton is officially signed with the Falcons for this coming year. He played well during the tryout contract at the end of last season, as evidenced by the first ever Paul Dainton hat trick (an assist, a penalty, and 30+ saves).  UPDATE SINCE THIS HAS BEEN IN THE DRAFTS BIN FOR A FEW WEEKS!: Mr. Dainton suited up for the first 2 Blue Jackets (thats the NHL team in Columbus for you not in the know/not paying attention to expansion team/ignoring the existence of the state of Ohio) games, seeing 2 periods of ice time in the first game, stopping 17 of 18 shots and getting the win. Yes, its a preseason game. But hey, its an NHL preseason game and he obviously showed something because he hasn’t been sent home yet. Am I the only one who thinks this should be a bigger deal? When I floated the hypothetical question of which Minuteman from last year’s team had the best chance of seeing time on an NHL club, the answer was Pereira and a dark horse for Teglia. Nobody said Dainton, and if they did they would have been mocked openly for their truth-fearing ways. Then Paul got a 10 day contract with the Falcons down in Springfield and we were happy. Hell, if he played well maybe he could see time as a journeyman AHL backup….if he was lucky. Now? It wouldn’t shock me to see Paul earning a roster spot on a NHL team as a backup. Maybe not this year, but eventually. Nobody thought Dainton was a superstar, and he isn’t. However, there is a definite value in having somebody who is consistently above average and will keep your team in games. When you’re a backup in the NHL, you will be starting a few games in addition to being inserted into games to stop the bleeding caused by an inconsistent starting goalie. Who better than Paul? Obviously we will all be watching and rooting to Paul to make it in the competitive world of profesional hockey.

When Toot said he was going to run the program like Navy Seals he apparently wasn’t kidding. The team doing some team building exercises preparing for this year

Frozen Fenway tickets are on sale. We have an entire row. Deal with it.

There will be no official exhibition game. Which is really sad. Seeing a game at the practice rink, presumably sober, with the actual die hard fans of the program was one of the highlights of last year. This will also make October 7th against Northeastern a hell of a lot more nerve-racking.

However, if you really want to know about the freshmen, look no further than this Fear The Triangle article on our incoming class.

More (legitimate) articles as the season approaches, including an updated version of the “How the Rest of Hockey East really feels” section (with a more angry title) as well as the long awaited return of our bastion of hockey knowledge, Mr Derek Walsh. [Editor's note: Not to mention the other mysterious surprises I keep hinting at. -MB]

Enjoy the weekend…and fuck BC.

-Matt

Well, no, we didn’t win. But we did put the Eagles on their toes. UMass is now do-or-die. If they loose tonight, they are out of the hockey east playoffs, and they loose any small hope to getting an NCAA bid.

Lets look at where they stand right now:

In the series with BC UMass is trailing 1-0 out of 3 games. In the pairwise, UMass is ranked 17. The pairwise determines the 16 teams that make the playoffs. So you have to figure that to be a consideration you have to be at least top 16. Well after Niagara had a huge upset last night against Bemidji State, We now know that there is one less spot available to us Since the winner of the Niagara-Alabama Huntsville game will get an automatic bid.

So where does this leave UMass? We need to win tonight, and then depending on the other scores around, we will probably have to win tomorrow night as well.

UMass seemed to be outplayed in every aspect of the game early on. BC was dominating the scoreboard, and UMass was never leading the game. Going into the locker room after two periods, UMass trailed 6-3. I want to know what was said in the locker room because out of nowhere, UMass scores not one, but two goals in the first minute of the third period to bring it to a 6-5 hockey game. We had a game.

The excitement continued throughout the rest of the third. UMass held BC to 6 goals, but had trouble finding one more. Dainton was pulled with 1:27 left, giving UMass a 6-5 skating advantage, but we just couldn’t keep the puck. BC had a breakaway, No UMass players, no goalie, just him a puck and a net, but he couldn’t catch up to the puck, resulting in an awkward angle shot that missed. UMass had one last drive.

At the buzzer, Martin Nolet fires a shot from the blue line into traffic, and BC goalie Milner (who played extremely well) covered it up to end the game.

So, yes we lost. And yes, it would have been great to have won, but what we need is to carry that momentum of the third period into this game. We need to stay out of the penalty box (BC was 3/4 on the PP and another goal came seconds after one of the power plays ended).

This could be the last game of the season tonight, so it is time to bring it all onto the ice. There is no point to playing half-ass, there is no tomorrow if we loose. It’s now. BC now sees the pressure that we can put. Their normal starting goalie, Muse, is recovering from an injury and the coaches did not think he was 100% yesterday. We need to breakdown Parker Milner, score early, and have BC trailing for once.

Side note to any BC fans reading this post: Thank you so much for your tax dollars. paying $15,000 to go to school is really nice. And a lot of us pay even less than that. If you cheer “state school” at us, we do not take that as an insult. We are proud of our school. We know the odds are stacked way against us, but we still come out cheering for our team, after all, this could be the last time our seniors ever put on a University of Massachusetts uniform.

side note 2: Yesterday was my birthday. UMass did not win. UMass: now you owe me two. Let’s start with tonight.

Ben (flag guy).

Oh and if anyone was wondering why the flag was not waving from the student section but being held instead: BC won’t let me in with the flag pole because I obstruct views. Just so everyone knows.

GO UMASS.